We will start with the first, and the worst. In the early 1990s a company named Enigma Miniatures produced a variety of chunky, heavy sci-fi gaming miniatures, some of which ran afoul of Games Workshop's intellectual property lawyers. Today, we look at the first Enigma subspecies.
You can see why GW had some issues with these: out of a universe of possibilities for Space Dwarf designs, they go for beardy little space bikers. These guys are made of a harder metal than Citadel, chunky and prone to scratches. Compare them to our Standard Squat Servitor (aka the S3 unit):
There is our S3 on the right, smaller, thinner, less round, and more detailed. Here are some closer photos at the Enigma biker-style space dwarfs.
These are the 5322 series Space Dwarfs with Power Gloves. Back view is below.
Below are the 5321 Series Space Dwarfs with Shotguns and Bulletproof Jackets.
Next are the 5320 Space Dwarfs with Flamer and Blaster.
Finally for the bikers series, what I believe are the 5323 or 4 Space Dwarfs with Rocket Launchers or Heavy Bolters, but without the weapons. Front:
Back
Finally, one more comparison to our S3 Unit to illustrate scale:
These guys are just too ugly and too unimaginative to bother painting.
That's a shame. They obviously ran afoul of intellectual property lawyers because... they look pretty similar to the real thing.
ReplyDeleteYou think if you were copying something, you wouldn't reuse their weapons. :P
ReplyDeleteWith regard to the IP issues, it's not just the similarity of the design. It's also that the miniature wargaming industry was much smaller when they were being made so the imitations could be more damaging to GW's finances than they would be now.
ReplyDeleteNobody else was making Space Elves & Dwarfs etc until the Rogue Trader rules and minis were released. Sci-fi minis were pretty uncommon in general in the 1980s, compared to fantasy, and were often designed for specific sci-fi rpgs or wargames (Star Trek, Robotech, etc). So it was pretty easy to determine who was imitating who in the sci-fi minis world.
Now the industry is larger and more varied, which allows finer segmentings of the market. And now there are more Space Dwarfs not made by Citadel than there are Citadel minis.
But this is also partly because the Squats were officially abandoned by GW. I think it was around 2000 when their list of trademarks in catalogs and White Dwarf dropped the term from the list. In contrast, there is not much in the way of competing Space Orks or Space Elves because they are still viable armies and valuable to GW.
You can see GW's limitations by looking at fantasy minis. Here, there are many army type minis available from other companies because GW largely borrowed from historical and fantasy literature. And so many useful Undead bits. You can never have too many undead bits.